


The Stranger

by KLConrad



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: and probably just an excuse to craft my own asshole time lord, but this is a lot of fun, haven't written a fic in a long time, idk what to tell you here people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-08 11:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16428923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KLConrad/pseuds/KLConrad
Summary: The Stranger has just escaped his prison and will not give up his freedom again, even if that means he has to kill everyone at his heels. Charlie finds herself running for her life right into a car that's bigger on the inside. The Doctor thinks he's the last Time Lord in existence. Donna honestly just wants a cup of tea.





	1. Prisoner Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi,
> 
> thanks for clicking on this! I'm currently rewatching Doctor Who and man, do I still love this series.  
> I've never written a fic in English before tho since it's not my native tongue so feel free to correct my grammar and vocab if you find any mistakes.  
> I hope you have as much fun reading as I have writing it!

He couldn't believe they'd found him so fast. He must've made a mistake in his hurry to get as far away as possible, the Trace must still be on the TARDIS. How else had they detected him on this underdeveloped rock only two days after his arrival?  
He wanted to curse the living hell out of these guards but didn't because his lungs already felt like he'd dragged them across the jagged salty ground of Nellos-3. His hearts were hammering the blood through his system, feet flew over the ground, his mind was racing, trying to reach the TARDIS but the mental connection was still dead.  
“ _Prisoner Thirteen, you will vacate the human residence immediately and follow quietly. Repeat: Prisoner Thirteen, you will vacate the human residence immediately and follow quietly._ ”  
_Or what?_ , he thought cynically.  
Somewhere on the edge of his mind he registered lights flickering to life above him but he couldn't be bothered with humans now. They'd only scream about witchcraft and try to burn someone and the last thing he needed now was more pursuers at his heels.  
In the darkness he saw the wall a fraction of a second too late and could only try to bounce off of the solid stone. Something in his left arm cracked and he stumbled to the side, trying to regain his balance. Every breath burned like electricity through his body, the fingers of his left hand were getting numb and still he tried to move forward. It was only when he looked up and the flicker of candles from above lit up the path that he froze. The dead end of the street seemed to mock him with its huge dark mouth and its flickering teeth of shadows.  
“ _Prisoner Thirteen._ ”  
The robotic voice was right behind him. The man's face settled into an icy mask and he turned around slowly.  
“ _You will vacate the human residence immediately and follow quietly._ ”  
A dozen weapons were aimed at him, their owners hidden beneath blank helmets. He could feel the air crackling with the energy of their blasters. He sent a last plea to the TARDIS and slowly put his hands into his pockets when he didn't get a response. The small movement was enough for all the guards to release their safety catches. The simultaneous clicking noise almost made him smile. It had masked the click of his own weapon perfectly. He didn't know exactly what it was, but it felt sonic and explosive and that was more than he'd hoped for.  
“ _Repeat: Prisoner Thirteen, you will vacate the human residence immediately and follow quietly._ ”  
“Sure”, he murmured and then he threw the whatever-it-was at the suits of armor and dived sideways to what he hoped was safety.  
A bright green explosion ripped half the street into pieces. The shock wave threw him to the ground, leaving him blinded and his left arm completely numb. He smelled burned hair, dimly registering that it might be his own, and heard distant human screams through the crackling in his ears.  
_The Atron Bomb_ , he thought for a reason that escaped him when he wanted to get a closer look at it. _It was the Atron Bomb._  
And then the crackling in his ears vanished and all of his senses came crashing down on him again. He groaned, rolled to his side, choked on the green fume still wavering in the air. Scrambling to his feet he threw a quick glance at the guards, some of them blown to bits, others badly wounded but somehow still standing. He willed his body to move, to get past that burning building, stumble through the massacre he had caused. His boots squelched in blood and dirt and something that might have been brains once but he didn't care for the guards. He left them behind as quickly as possible.  
He hadn't thought any of them were still able to hold their gun, let alone aim, but the ray of energy burning through his chest was very real. He collapsed to his knees as his left heart failed.  
“ _PriSOner THIrteEn._ ”  
The explosion must've damaged the vocal transmitter. It was little consolation but it still gave him the tiniest bit of satisfaction. His breath came rattling now and he tasted blood. Slowly he turned around. White spots danced around his vision.  
“ _YoU haVE bEen hoSTIle. YOu wilL BE eliMInaTEd._ ”  
“Go to hell.”  
Another ray of whizzing red energy and his second heart stuttered, convulsed, blackened where the blast had burned it. It hurt too much to scream. He simply keeled over, tasted the dirt of the street and his own blood, a thousand thoughts racing through his head and simultaneously none at all.  
So this was it. They got him.  
The world around him dimmed but it was a nice feeling, all his neurons shutting down, taking the pain with them. He vaguely wondered what they would do to him now. Maybe they'd kill him over and over again until he reached his last regeneration and could not attempt another reckless prison break, because this time, if they got him, there would not be another chance for him. Seven decided that he would not mind dying, truly dying, if that meant he'd finally be free. But he could not be sure how Eight would think about this or Nine or Ten.  
A drop of liquid gold found its way into his bloodstream, trickled down a vein and spread through his system, getting bolder and bolder by the second. He swallowed, pressing his eyelids closed trying to stop the flow, stop the energy from taking hold of him. It was like fighting a tsunami but still he tried.  
_Don't make me go back._  
His skin was glowing now, he could see it even through his closed eyes, felt the heat radiating off of him and still he resisted, tensed every muscle he still had any control over.  
_Please._  
The little spark in the back of his mind was almost drowned out by the raw energy ravaging his body, setting everything to zero again. But the screams vanished and so did the dirty road his face was pressed into. Instead the blood from his nose and mouth now trickled quietly onto pristine black metal.  
Seven raised his head, golden sparks exploding in his vision.  
“You're back”, he murmured.  
Somewhere a steam pipe hissed in response.  
His whole body was convulsing now but somehow he managed to get on his hands and knees. The central column was working without him, levers and buttons getting adjusted by the TARDIS herself. Something like a smile tucked at the corners of his mouth before he yelped in sudden pain and spat out blood that was too dark.  
The TARDIS hurtled herself into the Vortex and then the Stranger regenerated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was more of a prologue tbh so the next chapters are gonna be longer!
> 
> I will ofc not complain about comments but you're free to enjoy this story silently if you wish :)


	2. The Flying Shed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back!
> 
> As promised the chapters will be longer from now on :)

The only times Charlie managed to stay in this house for more than a few hours were when her parents weren't there. She loved them, she did, but they made it even more suffocating than it already was. After she'd lost her first job as a cashier she'd had to move in with them again. Three weeks she had lasted before the pale green walls followed her into her dreams, four before she started seeing movements from the corners of her eyes as if the walls were closing in on her. She'd fled then, just as she had fled right after school, taking the first job she could get so she could finally escape her parents' helicopter behaviour.  
Charlie had already cleaned up the house, made everything ready for their return from California and was glad to go back to her own flat tomorrow. It was tiny and the walls were grey, paint peeling off in more places she bothered to count but it was near the shop she worked in and, more importantly, it wasn't her childhood home. She thought of the fairy lights she'd hung up over her bed and her cactus in its elephant-shaped pot. Nodding to herself she decided that it was a good flat.  
She did enjoy the huge TV her parents owned though. Zapping through the programs Charlie had already devoured a whole bag of chips and now got up to see if there was any popcorn around. She aggressively decided against feeling guilty, because honestly what kind of superhero would she be if she could withstand PMS cravings? She also most definitely deserved a reward for house sitting two whole weeks.  
Satisfied with her reasoning Charlie trotted into the hall but she never got to reach the kitchen. A deafening crash from the garden made her jump almost all the way up to the first floor.  
“What the fuck!”, she yelled, her heart racing, fingers trembling from the rush of adrenaline.  
The wind must've knocked over one of the huge terracotta plant pots her mother loved so much. Weird, though, it had sounded more like wood splintering.  
Charlie grabbed her jacket and braced herself for a storm. When she went out the backdoor however, it was a mild night with no wind whatsoever. There were three other things in the garden the girl noticed but did not understand.  
One, none of the pots had keeled over.  
Two, the lawn, from what she could see from the light spilling outside, was not disturbed, every blade of grass neat and tidy.  
Three, there was a shed at the back of the garden that had definitely not been there this morning.  
Charlie squinted at the shed but it did not change shape into something less peculiar like a raccoon maybe or a fox and neither did it explain how it had ended up in her mother's backyard.  
Its door burst open, causing Charlie to jump again. A billow of smoke escaped into the night air and with it a strong scent of scalding hot metal. Flickering orange light poured out into the garden before a tall coughing figure blocked most of it.  
“Oh my god”, she breathed and finally she was getting aware of her feet again and ran across the lawn.  
The tall figure stumbled out of the door and onto the ground. Charlie barely registered the door slamming shut again, coming to a slippery halt next to the stranger. She dropped down to her knees, trying to get a better look at the man.  
“Are you okay? What's wrong?”  
She couldn't see any open wounds but his face was smeared with ash and blood and his shirt had two holes burned through its chest. He coughed violently, his whole body shaking and then she thought she saw a golden mist escape from his mouth but that must've been a trick of poor lighting and her pounding heart.  
“I'm gonna call you an ambulance! You're gonna be okay!”  
The man rolled onto his back, clawing at the right side of his chest. Charlie frantically patted down her pockets, realized she'd left her phone inside and jumped up, shouting something about being back in a second. She raced into the house, almost falling over the rug in the living room and grabbed her phone, still trying to find her balance. She didn't register she was shouting at the emergency operator until he told her to calm down and tell him the exact address. It was almost physically painful communicating all the details but finally he confirmed an ambulance was on its way and advised her to stay with the injured man. She nodded desperately, grabbing her phone so hard her fingers turned white. Charlie didn't remember going out again but her knees hit the grass and the stranger wasn't moving anymore.  
“Oh god, please don't be dead. Please don't be dead.”  
She pressed the palm of her hand against his chest and in her daze almost imagined two faint heartbeats fighting to keep going. Charlie let out a deep breath.  
“Okay”, she said, “Okay, you got this. You got this, dude. Don't die on me, you hear me? Don't die on me.”  
Everything she remembered from first aid was to roll the unconscious person onto their side so they wouldn't choke on blood or vomit but what if he had any kind of internal injury going on? She might make it worse by moving him.  
The minutes until the ambulance arrived were the longest of her life. Charlie kept her hand light on the man's chest, determined to follow his heartbeat and every rise and fall of his shallow breaths. She didn't know what she planned on doing if either stopped coming.  
When the paramedics finally came she was rooted to the ground again, watching them work, trying to answer questions she didn't know the answer to. She didn't tell them that the shed wasn't hers.  
Again Charlie couldn't remember moving but she was grabbing the bus' handhold tightly and then she was walking into the hospital, asking for a John Doe who had just come in.  
“Are you family?”, asked the nurse.  
“No”, Charlie said and furrowed her dark brow. “No, I'm the one who found him.”  
Why was she here? She didn't know the guy. He was getting treated right now, there was nothing she could do to help him anymore. And still she agreed to waiting until he was allowed visitors.  
In the sterile white waiting room it all came crashing down on her. A badly wounded man had collapsed in her parents' garden. He could've died there. He could still die here. She had no idea what had happened to him, no idea who he was or if he was ever going to wake up again.  
She gripped the edge of her seat, trying to calm her breathing. After a few moments she got out her phone, hoping for some distraction. She texted her co-worker Jess that she wouldn't be coming into work tomorrow and then scrolled through Twitter without processing any of the tweets. It could've been hours or minutes or days when someone approached her, telling her he was stable, she could see him now. She followed the nurse like a sleepwalker, slow and staggering, the halls warping around her as if the hospital itself was trying to trap her here. It was a relieve to sink down into the chair next to the stranger's bed. He was still unconscious but instead of his charred clothes he now wore a hospital gown. With his face cleaned he looked like he was merely sleeping. Charlie couldn't see any injuries and wondered again what the hell had happened. The only explanation her brain could come up with was that he'd been flying in his shed and then the shed had crashed, right into her backyard. The only problem was that sheds hadn't been able to fly last time she'd checked.  
“What am I doing here...”  
Charlie pressed her palms over her eyes and counted slowly to ten. If the guy didn't wake up this night she would leave. She felt responsible because she was the one who had found him but she couldn't just leave her own life on pause to watch over a stranger. For all she knew he could've been there to rob her and then crumpled under a heart attack or something.  
Her thoughts wandered back to the mysterious shed, only to swerve around it last minute because it gave her a headache. She pressed her palms more firmly into her eyes, trying to concentrate on the colourful patterns swirling before her. A quiet cough had her snap back to reality. The man's hand was slowly grabbing the blanket, his head rolled to the side and then he opened his eyes. A cloudy dark stare swept over her without seeing, took in the room, the dimmed lights and then tumbled back to her. He opened his mouth but it took him a few seconds to form words.  
“When... when am I?”  
It was barely more than a hoarse whisper.  
“The hospital”, Charlie murmured, somehow convinced he would break if she raised her voice.  
“No”, he rasped and his thick dark brow furrowed, almost looking annoyed. “ _When_ am I?”  
Charlie blinked.  
“Uh... Thursday?” He didn't seem satisfied. “September? 2018?”  
He nodded slightly at the ceiling, mumbling something that sounded like “463 years”. Charlie did not understand anything. When she opened her mouth to ask questions, however, the stranger shot up into a sitting position, causing her to yelp instead.  
“The Trace is still on the TARDIS!”  
“The what is still on the what?”  
Her voice sounded shriller than she'd liked but she didn't have any time to be embarrassed about it because the man was already out of bed and halfway to the door.  
“Hey, wait, mister! You can't just go- oh my god.”  
Charlie threw her hands in the air and got up to follow him.  
“Wait! Dude, wait!”  
She had to run to catch up with him, grabbed him on the upper arm and was almost thrown to the ground when he spun around.  
“You can't just leave!”, she panted. “The doctors haven't-”  
“Watch me.”  
He wrenched his arm away and marched towards the elevator. Charlie just stood there for a moment, staring at her hand still hovering in midair. Then she came to her senses, sprinted the last few meters and squeezed through the closing doors. The man glowered at her through deep-set eyes.  
“I did _not_ live through this clusterfuck of a night just for you to run off and get overrun by a truck or something!”  
He huffed and rolled his eyes.  
“Where are you heading anyway?”, she snapped.  
“Somewhere safe.”  
“What do you mean somewhere-” She remembered her theory of a robber with heart problems. “Shit, are you a criminal?”  
He turned his head and raised an amused eyebrow.  
“You could say so.”  
“Fuck”, Charlie said. “Fuck.” And then: “Am I being kidnapped?”  
“ _You_ followed _me_.”  
A bright _Ding!_ sounded and the elevator doors opened. He tipped his non-existent hat and walked out. Again Charlie stood there for a moment, dumbfounded, before she sprinted after him.  
“Will you follow me around all night?”  
“You can bet your ass I will, mister. If I can't make you stay at the hospital I'll make sure the police'll get you.”  
“I'll have to kill you then.”  
Charlie's step faltered for a moment before she saw his sharp grin and realized he was probably (hopefully) messing with her. Her face flushed an angry red.  
“What's your name anyway?”  
“The Stranger.”  
“Sure, Jan. People just call you the Stranger?”  
“Yeah.”  
Charlie made a sort of “hmpf” sound and then said: “Okay. And why exactly are you on the run?”  
“Oh, you know, bit of this, bit of that.”  
“No, I don't know”, she said aggressively.  
His short, bark-like laughter startled her.  
They were out of the hospital now, the cooling night air making everything even more surreal. What was she doing here?  
The Stranger walked briskly towards the park at the back of the hospital and she wondered if he was simply mad, if he even remembered that she was still there. Or maybe she was the mad one here, following a complete stranger, who may or may not be a criminal. Had her parents' house gotten to her after all?  
Charlie walked a few paces behind him, watched as he produced a glowing key from around his neck – of course the key was fucking glowing, what else would it be doing – and wondered what that crackling sound was.  
She didn't wonder for long, because a few moments later shots were fired and the world went to shit yet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed!  
> See you next weekend :)


	3. The TARDIS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, guys,
> 
> hope you have fun with this chapter! :)

The Stranger thought it incredibly rude that he was being shot at once again. He smelled burned flesh and felt the prickling of the leftover regeneration energy attending to his wound. Glad to find he was already running, he squeezed the glowing key and pulled at the mental string connecting himself to the TARDIS. She was not pleased to hear from him so quickly and sent him a wave of angry red metal and smoke scratching at his lungs, only letting herself get persuaded when he concentrated on the burning pain in his side.  
He didn't know where he was running, but it didn't really matter either as long as he was fast enough. This body seemed to have a better chance than the last one – his legs were quite a bit longer now.  
Another ray of red energy passed him way closer than he would've liked but he kept on running, randomly dodging left and right. He'd never understood why humans kept glancing backwards at their attackers, when that small movement clearly compromised their momentum. What were they trying to see anyway? They already knew they were being hunted.  
A nearby tree burst into flames and he thought it time to dodge again. Just when he prepared to send an angry flare at the TARDIS, a deserted street came into view and on it a classy grey car just finished materializing. Seven used to know quite a bit about this century's human culture but Eight found he could not recall any of these facts for the lives of him and he also did not care at all. He was absolutely sure, though, that the TARDIS had picked a very expensive and noble outer appearance because she felt like he didn't stroke her ego enough and she had to do everything herself.  
The Stranger sprinted the last few meters and leaped through the already open door. He did not bother closing it, instead running towards the central column and slamming his hands down on the console, smashing random coordinates into the computer. The TARDIS threw herself into the Vortex and only then did he allow his body to let go of some of the tension and take a few deep breaths. His hearts were hammering out of sync and he tasted metallic regeneration energy before it escaped his mouth and dissolved.  
“What the fuck.”  
He flinched and spun around. There at the door of his TARDIS stood the girl from the hospital, white-faced and eyes the size of plates. She _had_ told him she would be following him around all night but he hadn't thought she would be this persistent.  
“What the hell are you doing here?”, he snapped.  
She swallowed a few times and when she finally did find her voice, it was higher and weaker than he remembered it.  
“You seemed to know where you were going so I followed.”  
“Why?”  
She huffed and regained a bit of the defiant spark in her dark eyes.  
“So I wouldn't get _shot_?”  
“Get out of here!”  
“I'm not going anywhere until it's safe again! Also you have no right to talk! Your car is bigger on the inside! And these people were shooting at _you_! ”  
Her voice had gotten continually shriller the more words she pressed out. The Stranger couldn't see how the TARDIS' technology had anything to do with him losing his right to speak but he chose to ignore her anyway. He grabbed a few tools from the console and crouched to open up a compartment right underneath his feet. Blue steam rose once he put the metal plate aside and the machinery came into view. He waved it away impatiently so he could examine the Trace the guards had put on his TARDIS.  
Steps clinked over the metal before him.  
“Don't ignore me. What the hell is going on?”  
“Good question. I thought I'd disabled the Trace but it still seems to send out a signal to the guards.”  
“What?”  
Oh, right. She hadn't been talking about the technical issues. There was a pleading tone to her voice now. The Stranger sighed and forced himself to look up at her. Her brown eyes were still huge and scared, her dark hair was a mess and blood was slowly trickling from a scratch on her cheek. She looked barely more than a child and somehow that made him even more annoyed at her presence.  
“Listen, I'll drop you off somewhere as soon as I have destroyed the Trace, okay? Until then shut up and don't touch anything.”  
Amazingly, she did as she was told. She sank down where she stood, crossed her legs and kept her gaze fixed on him. He suppressed the urge to snap at her again and instead tried to just ignore her staring.  
After a few minutes examining the collection of wires, metal bits and cogwheels underneath the floor he found what he was looking for. Something like a metal beetle had fastened itself onto one of the smaller lines feeding into the computer. He grabbed it with a pair of pliers and squashed it into tiny pieces. A small smile flickered over his face but froze when he looked up and promptly remembered the girl. She raised her eyebrows.  
“Are you done?”  
He considered lying but decided he would probably get rid of her faster if he didn't.  
“Yeah.”  
“Good. Then be so kind and explain to me what the _fuck_ is going on.”  
He sighed again, dimly wondering if this was something his new incarnation did a lot.  
“I was a prisoner. I escaped. Now the guards of said prison are hunting me.”  
“Thanks, I got that much already. How about you tell me how you got a whole bloody shed in my mother's backyard.”  
“Ah”, he said. “You haven't invented something like chameleon circuits yet, have you? It's how my TARDIS blends in.”  
“Your what?”  
“My- Rassilon, you don't know anything, do you?”  
She narrowed her eyes.  
“You're incredibly rude for someone on the run.”  
“Am I? I always seem to be.”  
Thinking back he felt like only his second incarnation had been quite adept in social norms but he also hadn't been a renegade back then.  
“Wonderful. So. What's a TARDIS?”  
“Stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Its a kind of ship.”  
“We're in a car, though.”  
The Stranger looked at her in a manner that made him feel like he was still Three teaching at the academy.  
“No, we're not. That was just a disguise.”  
The girl nodded a lot and swallowed what seemed to be an immense amount of saliva.  
“Sure. Okay. So your TARDIS is bigger on the inside.”  
“Yeah.”  
More nodding.  
“Okay.”  
Pause. Then: “Where are you taking me?”  
“Dunno. Just punched in random coordinates to get away.” He threw a glance at one of the monitors. “Right now we're approximately three thousand years after your planet started existing, somewhere in the Ghachnok galaxy it seems.”  
“We're when in the what now?”  
Her voice was very high again.  
The Stranger tried not to roll his eyes, failed halfway through and stared at the ceiling for a bit.  
“I suppose you haven't invented time travel yet either. Have you at least left your planet already?”  
“I.. there are a few people on the moon every now and then”, she offered weakly.  
He sighed, deciding that yes, this was something his eighth incarnation just did a lot.  
“Right. I'll just drop you off as quickly as I can. Go explore the TARDIS or something, she seems to have redecorated since I fell into your mother's garden.”  
“She... does that?”  
“Yeah, stubborn thing she is. Don't touch anything.”  
The Stranger pulled one of the monitors close, trying to find the nearest planet inhabitable by humans. Thankfully the navigation and memory software had not been damaged so it only took a few seconds to find the right data. He turned to the keyboard but before his fingers could touch the keys, his liver and left heart stopped working and a new rush of regeneration energy dragged him into nothingness.

***

One moment the Stranger stared at a monitor depicting hundreds of tiny round symbols, the next he crashed to the floor. Charlie jumped but this time she did not immediately run to his help. Last time she'd done that all hell had broken loose. Her new method of approaching was tiptoeing - maybe the universe would be kinder to her that way.  
“Hello?”, she said and felt stupid doing so.  
When she touched his shoulder with her foot he did not respond.  
“Why do you lose consciousness so much?”, she asked him exasperatedly and knelt down next to him after all.  
The doctors had never told her what was wrong with him. He'd fled the hospital before they'd had a chance to do anything much really.  
Lying there on the dark metal ground, still wearing his hospital gown, he looked vulnerable despite his size. Now that she was close she could see sweat trailing down his temples, his damp hair sticking to his skin. Charlie knelt there on the cold ground for a minute or two before she made her decision. This man was insane. She'd done everything she could for him but he was not her responsibility and goddamnit, she'd been running around all night like a maniac and she'd been _shot at _. No one had tried to break into this TARDIS thing though, so she assumed the attackers were gone. She'd just leave and go home as quickly as possible. What she needed now was a strong cup of tea and a long night's sleep and maybe tomorrow she'd wake up and realize it had all just been a weird dream.__  
She threw a last look at the Stranger – she hoped his head hurt when he woke up – and got up. In a matter of seconds she was at the door and opened it slowly, ready to slam it shut again should anyone shoot at her.  
“Jesus fucking Christ.”  
The little street near the hospital was gone. In fact, the whole world was gone. In its place was darkness riddled with stars. To the left something like purple fog swirled around a golden light. It was incredibly cold. Slowly Charlie closed the door again.  
“No going out then”, she whispered. And then: “Okay. Okay. This is fine.”  
It was the opposite of fine but she would not allow herself to think that. She walked back to where the Stranger lay, holding onto the railing all the way because at this point she was not quite sure if she could trust her own senses anymore.  
“This is insane”, she told him.  
She thought about sitting down next to him and waiting for him to wake up again but her whole body prickled as if ants were crawling under her skin and she was sure that, if she sat down, she would simply explode. So she did what he'd told her to do: explore.  
There were two hallways branching off what seemed to be the control room and Charlie took the right one first. It looked just as steampunk as the room she'd left; built out of metal, everything in bronze, copper or messing. Every now and then there was a transparent patch in the walls, revealing cogwheels and wires and other metal bits she had no name for. The light seemed to emanate directly from the walls.  
_It's alien._   
As soon as the thought was formed her heart sped up. Almost simultaneously the light around her became warmer and dimmed to dawn-like level which Charlie was grateful for. She peeped through the first door she saw, finding a friendly lit kitchen with a hodgepodge of dishes that seemed to have been collected from all kinds of times and places. She set a foot into it wondering if she'd find some tea but then something inside her urged her along and she closed the door again. The next room consisted of beach chairs, a juice stand and a large swimming pool. Charlie nodded and closed that door again too. The third room felt somehow right. The walls were a sterile white, quietly humming machinery placed along them. There were a few cabinets, each filled with ointments and medication she did not recognize. In the middle of the room stood what looked like an examination table.  
Now that she'd discovered this room she couldn't just leave the Stranger lying on the hard metal floor. She still wished his head would hurt like hell when he woke up but she supposed she could at least try to get him here.  
Back in the console room she found the Stranger exactly where she'd left him. Charlie had always secretly prided herself in being quite strong despite the belly chub she tried so hard to hide but, naturally, the man turned out to be of more weight than she'd thought.  
“ _Why_ ”, she panted halfway through the room, “are you so _heavy_.”  
The thin hospital gown probably didn't do much to cushion his bum as she dragged it along the hard floor but he deserved that. A few steps into the hallway she leaned him against a wall to catch her breath. When she looked up something seemed weird. The first door was way closer than she remembered. She narrowed her eyes at it. Finally curiosity got the better of her and she opened the door – behind it was the med bay.  
“Sure”, she muttered.  
She dragged the Stranger all the way into the middle of the room and somehow even managed to lift him onto the examination table. Her back hurt a lot after that and she again found herself wishing his head would throb once he regained consciousness.  
Charlie still didn't like the idea of just sitting around waiting for him to wake up (again) and so she left, craving a good cup of tea now more than ever. Had all the other rooms rearranged too? Or had only the med bay randomly switched places with the kitchen? She tried the first door she reached. Curiously, it was now on the left side of the hallway instead of the right but that was hardly the weirdest thing she'd seen here. The door opened into the kitchen.  
“Yesss”, she whispered. And then, hesitantly: “Thank you.”  
Charlie imagined a machine somewhere humming appreciatively. Or maybe she didn't imagine it. The Stranger had talked about the TARDIS as if the ship had a mind of its own and hell, maybe it did. It was a weirdly comforting thought, not being alone in the midst of space and, if she allowed herself to believe him, time.  
While the water was starting to boil, Charlie opened a few of the cupboards, looking for a mug. Instead she found a mixture of colourful everyday dishes and clearly alien... stuff that she supposed had something to do with food too. On the third try she finally found the mugs, choosing one with a happy elephant on it that reminded her of her little cactus back home.  
A few minutes later she walked down the hallway with a steaming mug of tea in her hand, feeling immensely better already. There seemed to be an awful lot to explore in this ever-changing ship and, she thought, at least she wasn't being shot at or suffocated by her parents' house anymore.


	4. Mavos

It was several hours before the Stranger woke up. Charlie'd discovered the usual: two bathrooms, several bedrooms and a pantry. She'd peeked into a huge library and also, one of her weirder finds, a sort of observatory. In a room full of records and CDs and a piano on one end she'd lost herself for more than an hour. It seemed to be a kind of shrine to music itself; it contained everything from 11th century's sheet music to a _Best of 2026 CD_ and small plates that resembled memory cards, labelled with a string of numbers and symbols that may or may not have been dates.  
Charlie felt oddly okay with being on a ship that was apparently able to travel backwards and forwards in time as well as journeying thousands of miles in a matter of seconds. It all felt like a dream, the real world shut out for a few precious hours.  
When she checked on the Stranger after what felt like three or four hours he stirred slightly and shifted his position when she called his name. She was sure he would wake up soon and decided to make herself another tea, just in case he'd be angry that she'd touched stuff after all and would not allow it again.  
Her anger at him had calmed a little in the quiet hours she had spent marvelling at the seemingly never ending TARDIS and so, on a whiff of what she felt was slightly misplaced altruism, she made a mug of tea for him too. Might as well keep him happy, considering he was the only one able to bring her home.  
When Charlie entered the med bay again he was just sitting up.  
“Back to the world of the living, sleepyhead?” The Stranger mumbled something and frowned at her. “I gotta say, it's kinda worrying that you keep fainting on me, dude.”  
He mumbled something else.  
“What?”, she said, suddenly reminded of her mother who hated it when Charlie mumbled.  
“I said it won't happen again. Just hadn't finished regenerating yet.”  
“Is that a fancy word for sleeping off a hangover?”  
He snorted and shook his head.  
Determined to keep things light, Charlie set down his tea and took a sip of her own.  
Again he frowned at her and then said: “Your face is a mess.”  
“Excuse me?”, she said, a little higher than usual because the comment had hit her out of nowhere.  
“Blood”, the Stranger clarified. “You've got blood all over it.”  
“Oh...”  
A little embarrassed Charlie raised her hand to her cheek and it came away rusty with dried blood. Only now that she saw it and her initial explosion of anxiety and adrenaline had ebbed away, did her face begin to hurt. She frowned. A low branch must've cut her skin when she was running for her life. A small, slightly hysterical laugh escaped her. She'd been running for her life. That sure was a first.  
The Stranger watched her warily out of deep-set dark eyes and she bit her tongue, trying to stifle her mad giggles.  
“How'd you get me here?”  
“Dragged you”, she answered honestly.  
His eyebrows shot up in mild surprise.  
“Why?”  
“I don't know. Felt right once I'd found this room.”  
“Must've been the TARDIS. Old girl gets into your head.”  
Charlie hesitated and then asked: “Literally?”  
“Yeah.”  
“... Okay.”  
It wasn't as if she hadn't thought about the ship being somewhat sentient but telepathic as well? God, she was just glad she hadn't accidentally broken something. She took another sip of her tea, prompting the Stranger to do the same. He got very quiet and slowly set down the pot again, looking disturbed.  
“What is it?”, she asked, somewhat offended he seemed to dislike her tea.  
“I don't like tea anymore”, he said quietly and Charlie could've sworn she saw all five stages of grief flickering over his face in a matter of seconds.  
“That's...” She hesitated. “That's rough, buddy.”  
“I've always loved tea.”  
The Stranger looked utterly betrayed and Charlie had difficulty fighting down another fit of mad giggling.  
“So what changed?”  
“Told you, I regenerated.”  
“I still have no idea what that means.”  
He sighed and shook his head.  
“Doesn't matter.”  
He got up without another word and walked towards the door.  
“Hey, wait”, shouted Charlie, wondering briefly how often she had yelled that after him now. “Where are you going?”  
“Changing”, he called back, sounding annoyed. “You gonna supervise me there too?”  
Charlie felt her cheeks get pink and muttered something rude. Determined not to sit around waiting for him she went looking for a bathroom and found one fairly quickly. He'd been right, she had to admit. Her face was a mess. She looked like she'd been in a fight with a bear and lost. Cautiously she washed her face, cleaned the long cut on her cheek with warm water and plucked some leafs from her unruly hair. That mess of dark brown curls was, admittedly, her own and not tameable on the best of days but at least she didn't look like a mad 16th century's peasant anymore.  
Turning off the tap she realized her hands were shaking. Charlie looked at them for a while as if there were someone else's hands before her thoughts caught up with her body.  
She'd been running for her _life_ just a few hours ago. She'd been _shot at_. And she didn't even know by whom! What if they were waiting for her when she got back home? What if she never _got_ back home? Nobody would ever know if she died out here, somewhere in space, millions of years before she was born. How was that even possible? Was she going insane?  
Charlie grabbed the edges of the sink, trying to calm her breathing. She stared at herself in the mirror, trying to scoff at the tears that were suddenly blurring her vision.  
_Get your shit together_ , she scolded herself, still desperately clinging to the sink.  
She forced herself to time her breathing, _in 1, 2, 3, out 1, 2, 3_ , closed her eyes and concentrated solely on counting and breathing. After a few minutes her muscles relaxed and she dared to open her eyes again.  
_In 1, 2, 3, out, 1, 2, 3, in..._  
When she was done she slowly walked back to the console room. The Stranger was there, pressing buttons and pulling levers with a practised hand, looking like he'd been doing this all his life, looking like the last piece that had been missing in this steampunk painting. His messy dark hair that had tickled his nose before was now loosely combed back and he'd changed clothes too. Instead of his hospital gown he was now sporting a weird mix of boots, jeans, shirt, a waistcoat with a pocket watch and an old fashioned tailcoat in dark muted purple.  
“What is it?”  
His gaze was still on the machine, adjusting bits here and there – Charlie hadn't thought he'd noticed her.  
“I...” She trailed off, wondering if she could be honest even though it was rude and then decided that yes, she most definitely could. “You look weird.”  
The Stranger did not lift his eyes to meet hers and instead consulted a monitor full of symbols Charlie didn't understand.  
“So do you.”  
“Excuse me?”  
“Never understood human fashion. Never got it quite right either, even though my taste changes with every regeneration.”  
“You keep saying that word and I still don't know what it means.”  
The Stranger now stood with his back to her, but she had the distinct feeling he was rolling his eyes at her. He sighed, typed something on a keyboard and then finally turned around to look at her, arms crossed over his chest.  
“Listen, I was dying before you found me, okay? I was dying and then my body changed so I wouldn't be dying anymore. Simple as that.”  
“Simple as that”, echoed Charlie and now it was her turn to cross her arms and look at him as if he was about as clever as a slice of toast someone had dropped and never picked up again. She raised one eyebrow, determined to win this staring contest. In the end she did, because something from the console zapped him, causing him to jump.  
“Ow”, he said, pronouncing the word heavily and glowering at the central column as if it was the machine's fault.  
“Fine”, he spat after a moment, throwing the console a furious look and turning back to Charlie. “I'm not human.” It did not shock her as much as it should have. She didn't even think to argue. “I'm a Time Lord. We live for centuries but we're not immortal. Our bodies can die, except there's this neat little trick called regeneration. When the body is beyond repair it changes.”  
“In what way does it change?”  
“Every way. Everything gets set to zero again and a whole new person gets created. Well, not entirely new, the core personality of a Time Lord always lives on but apart from that... I used do be different. Probably. I don't actually know what I'm like yet, I've only been here for a day and a half.”  
Charlie puffed for a lack of words and cleverer things to do. Then she nodded.  
“Okay. Can you also just like, grow another heart when you want to?”  
“Don't need to, I already have two.”  
She nodded some more.  
“Good for you, buddy.”  
The whirring machinery around them stilled, the silence weirdly lacking. Charlie had already become used to the quiet hum in the background. Not hearing it seemed like something was missing.  
“Right”, said the Stranger, “We've landed. Get out of my ship.”  
Charlie blinked, opened her mouth and then closed it again.  
“What are you waiting for?”  
That same question had already crossed her mind and not found an answer. She'd been wanting to go home as soon as she'd entered the bus to the hospital, only visiting the Stranger because she'd felt responsible. Then she'd had to dodge bullets, jumped into a car that was bigger on the inside and looked into outer space. It just felt weird to leave all of that behind as abruptly as she'd been thrown into it, she supposed.  
“You brought me back home?”, she asked, stalling for time.  
His face remained neutral but he hesitated and Charlie's heart dropped into an icy lake inside her stomach.  
“You didn't bring me home? Where are we then?”  
“Mavos. Home planet to the Eleen, but inhabitable by humans.”  
“Inhabitable by- you fucker were just going to drop me off on an alien planet?!”  
She stomped a few steps closer and glowered up at him. He narrowed his dark eyes, not breaking her stare.  
“You can be glad I'm not just chucking you out into deep space, girl.”  
A steam pipe sounded somewhere to her left.  
“Oh, don't you hiss at me like that!”, the Stranger growled, his eyes now directed at the arched ceiling. “You know full well we can't just go back to her time and place, the guards are still around.”  
Something hummed, the lights clicked and the central column twisted in a half circle and sank about half a meter into the ground.  
“Great, now she's sulking”, snapped the Stranger as if it was Charlie's fault.  
He pressed a few buttons to no avail, tried typing something into a screen and got zapped again.  
“Fine!”  
He whirled around to face Charlie. She did not budge. He pushed a hand through his hair, covered his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.  
“Fine”, he said without vigour this time, “Come with me.”  
“Where to?”, she asked, arms crossed, eyes narrowed suspiciously at him.  
“Out. The TARDIS calms down quicker when no one's inside. Might as well go see the planet.”  
When she didn't move he heaved a tired sigh.  
“I'm not going to abandon you there. The TARDIS wouldn't let me leave if I came back without you. Now move your stubborn body or so Rassilon help me.”  
Charlie contemplated his words for another second and finally walked towards the door. She was curious after all. The Stranger opened the door, Charlie following him out into brilliant sunlight. She stepped onto a deserted street with hunched red and yellow houses garnishing it on either side. The light wind carried voices, cries and growls and laughter, the busy hum of any city. Instinctively, she took a deep breath, taking in the smell of pastries, heated paving stones and something fresh like an ocean's breeze. She tried to stop a grin from spreading over her face, because she still wanted to let the Stranger feel her anger, but this was just marvellous. He nodded down the road and strolled towards the bakery dispensing that delicious smell into the air, hands buried in the pockets of his tailcoat. Charlie's stomach rumbled and she hurried to catch up with him.  
“Do you have any money?”, she asked.  
“Nah. Easy to nick things here, though.”  
Her brows shut up in surprise.  
“We shouldn't... do that.”  
One of his eyebrows twitched and he continued towards the shop with all the confidence in the world. He'd heard her uncertainty as clearly as she had. She felt her cheeks flush, but her heart thumped with giddy excitement. She was not nearly as taken aback with the idea as she would've liked and now that she thought about it, she was _really_ hungry. And besides, she would never see this planet again right? She wouldn't take anything essential from someone, just a little food.  
The Stranger didn't wait for her to make up her mind but entered the shop, holding the door just long enough for her to scurry in behind him. It looked almost like a normal bakery. It was friendly lit with red chairs scattered around small tables. Three walls were decorated with tables, displaying all the baked goods. Behind a counter at the back wall stood a green alien that, with its four furry arms, broad green body under a stained apron and dog-like face, was only vaguely humanoid. Charlie knew she was being rude but she could not stop staring and neither could she bring her lower jaw anywhere near her upper jaw again.  
“Hi”, said the Stranger brightly and walked towards the counter. In a stage whisper he added: “Don't mind her, first time she's left home.”  
“No worries”, answered the baker – Charlie assumed he was male – in a husky voice that hovered on a bark.  
He gave them a warm look and a wide smile full of canine teeth and opened all four of his arms invitingly.  
“How can I help?”  
“I'm afraid we're terribly lost”, said the Stranger, grinning sheepishly and moving closer.  
It occurred to Charlie then that he was trying to draw all the attention to himself, leaving her to do the actual nicking. She managed to close her mouth after all, heart thumping in her throat.  
“Would you mind explaining the way to the Blue Palace?”  
“Of course”, barked the alien with what Charlie thought was delight.  
She edged a little closer to the right wall, examining the various pastries there. Some of them looked familiar, small cakes topped with nuts and chocolate, dark brown bread filled with marmalade and several kind of bread rolls. Others seemed way more alien like some kind of green croissants, fist-sized spheres of what looked like blue-ish sand and transparent jelly-like braided buns containing red cubes.  
She threw a quick glance at the baker who was gesturing with all four of his arms, deep in conversation with the Stranger who did not let go of his gaze. Her mum would be petrified if she knew what her daughter was about to do. A sharp smile not unlike the Stranger's flickered over Charlie's face. She took a deep breath and quickly pocketed a few filled bread rolls. Another quick glance; the baker had not noticed anything. She tried to contain her giddy grin, heart thumping quickly in her throat. She made another grab, stuffing anything in her pockets that wasn't sticky. Feeling bold, she went in a third time, trying to take stuff here and there so there wouldn't be a huge gap to notice. Realizing she didn't have any more room in her pockets she stuffed two rolls into her shirt, quickly turning towards the door and trying very hard to suppress a girlish giggle. She could not face the baker anymore with her haul showing clearly under the cloth. As naturally as possible Charlie sauntered towards the door. She stepped outside, not able to contain her grin any longer. She felt like whooping and maybe doing a little joyful dance. Instead she leaned against the wall a few metres next to the bakery, took the awkwardly placed rolls from under her shirt and waited for the Stranger with her heart still fluttering in her chest. When he finally emerged she had forgotten all about her anger and beamed at him. For a moment he seemed surprised but then a sharp smile spread slowly over his face.  
“Told you it's easy to nick things here. Come on, I know just the place.”  
He led her down the alley into a bigger street. Here Charlie got her first proper glance into the alien city. It was weirdly human and simultaneously the exact opposite. There were shops offering food and drink, signs pointing the way to local sights, posters and screens advertising plays and games but also cheap repair of ones artificial limbs ( _“Stuck in an awkward position again? Use Reckna's Repair and don't ever get slapped by your jealous partner again!”_ ) and a beauty salon treatment for “skin, fur and scales”. Humans walked alongside aliens of all shapes and sizes, all of them seeming content, the street humming with their busy voices and laughter. They walked for a few minutes, Charlie having trouble to keep her mouth closed again. She almost lost sight of the Stranger more than once because she'd stopped to goggle at something new, only to snap out of her amazement and hurry after him. They passed little colourful houses and a few bus stops busy with people - “That one has two heads!” “Uh-huh.” - and waited at a right light for the cars to pass by - “Do _all_ their cars fly?” “Yeah.” “Okay.”  
After a few minutes they entered a little square framed by cafés on one side and a small canal on the other. The Stranger led her to the low wall by the canal and sat down. Charlie sat beside him, pulling out everything she'd taken from the bakery earlier. She grinned a little sheepishly at the squashed state of the pastries, but the Stranger didn't seem to mind. He broke off a piece of fruit bread, then pointed to one of the green croissants and said with a full mouth: “You gotta try one of these.”  
Charlie laughed and sniffed cautiously at the baked good before taking a bite. It was sweet and peppery with a hint of lemon, nothing like she'd ever tasted but weirdly good. Her stomach rumbled once again and she stuffed more of the croissant into her mouth. Next she tried a pastry that was oddly precise in its Texas shape and turned out to be salty and chewy. She glanced at the Stranger who was busy with a stuffed bread roll and had turned his golden face to the sun. One leg was propped up, his chin resting on his knee. For the first time since she'd met him he looked... normal, muscles relaxed, eyes closed against the light. How long had it been since he'd had a moment of peace? When had he actually escaped his prison? How long was he on the run now?  
He seemed to feel her gaze, opened his eyes again and turned his head slowly like a cat on a lazy afternoon. Charlie's lips twitched into a small smile and he studied her, the slightest frown on his face, but he did not break their delicate truce and neither did she.  
“How come the baker spoke English?”, she asked after a while with nearly all the pastries gone.  
“He didn't.”  
“But I heard him.”  
She thought she saw a smile tugging at his lips but wasn't sure.  
“The TARDIS translates every language. Told you she gets inside your head.”  
“That sounds incredibly useful. Was she always able to do that or does she change abilities too?”  
“Nah, just her looks. I also used to look different. Before my regeneration.” He paused for a bit. “Actually, I have no idea what I look like now, haven't encountered a mirror yet.”  
He seemed to wait for something, looking at her with slightly raised brows.  
“Oh!”, said Charlie belatedly. “Uhhh. You have black hair. Brown eyes. Sort of... Asian? You're uh...” She waved her hand a bit. “Really tall.”  
He snorted and shook his head.  
“You should never write a book.”  
“Wasn't going to”, she replied snappishly, but grinned a second later.  
The Stranger gave her one of his sharp smiles and it hit her then in the sunlight of an alien planet that he was quite attractive.  
_Shit_ , she thought. And again, just for good measure: _Shit._  
She was not going to be able to stay mad at him for fucking up her whole life if he looked at her like that.  
“So your name”, she said quickly before her brain could tumble further down that road. “Is it really your birth name? Do you Time Lords just have that sort of names?”  
“No”, he said slowly, “It's the name I gave myself.”  
Charlie's brows shut up in surprise.  
“Why's that?”  
“It seemed appropriate at the time. Still does.”  
“How?”  
“Well. I was imprisoned. Exiled and then imprisoned actually. Everywhere else I'm only passing through, a stranger, there and gone in the blink of an eye.” He thought for a moment and then added: “I believe you humans got the word 'stranger' from me.”  
“You're kidding.”  
“Only slightly. You can never be quite sure how you influence history when you have a time machine.”  
Charlie didn't know what to say to that and nibbled on her last bread roll even though she was quite full.  
“What's yours?”  
“Huh?”  
“Your name. Haven't asked yet.”  
She hesitated for the fraction of a second and then said: “Charlotte.”  
The Stranger nodded and Charlie let her gaze wander over the square, getting caught here and there by spiky skin or blue tentacles. Four angular blue and grey striped drones came hovering out of an alley and the atmosphere shifted almost imperceptibly. She wouldn't have felt it if she hadn't been observing the place and even now she wasn't sure, but were the laughs and voices were loud and merry just a moment ago they now were a bit too loud and too merry. Everything's fine, nothing to see here, move along please. How often had that kind of laugh shrilled in her own ears when she'd tried to escape her parents' overly worried nagging? It's nothing, I'm fine, just move on.  
Some of the customers of the cafés looked over to the drones, only to avert their gaze again quickly while others avoided to look at them altogether.  
“What's happening?”  
She'd whispered without meaning to. She followed the drones with her eyes, only giving the Stranger a quick glance when he didn't immediately respond. He was watching them as well, dark brow furrowed, eyes glinting cognac in the sunlight.  
“They're police drones”, he murmured, more to himself than Charlie. “Don't remember those...”  
The drones hovered over to the groups of people sitting at the café tables and now the voices were definitely strained. Someone knocked over a mug, the shattering of glass on stone incredibly loud in the tense atmosphere. Charlie did not realise she was holding her breath until it hurt. Someone began crying and the drones were on them in the blink of an eye. They were circling the lanky creature. The cafés had become very quiet, all eyes on the sobbing alien as they stood up on shaking legs and got escorted away by the drones which were circling the creature on chest height.  
“Stranger, what in the hell is happening? This one didn't do anything, they can't just take them away, can they?”  
Charlie's heart was pounding, her fists clenched in confusion and shock.  
“Apparently they can.”  
There was an angry flare inside her chest at his indifference and then two of the drones, left their formation, heading directly for Charlie.  
“No, no, no, no, no”, murmured the Stranger and jumped up.  
He grabbed her and pulled her up as well, but the drones were circling them before they could make another move.


End file.
